Liz reports on her first Fletcher trip

Last week, Liz and three other APSIA colleagues (nicknamed the G4) climbed into a van and toured the south. I’m a happy blogger because she wrote about it AND took a bunch of photos, which she arranged far more artfully than I ever do! Here’s Liz’s well-documented report.

My first travel experience with Fletcher!

Though I’ve traveled a lot in my roles prior to Fletcher, I had never experienced group travel before, and had never embarked on a minivan trip with colleagues from other schools. I’ll admit, I was a little nervous leading up to the trip, as I had only been at Fletcher a little over a month and I wasn’t sure what to expect. That said, I was also really excited to try something new, meet new people, and see some parts of the U.S. that I had only ever flown over! I packed up my favorite suitcase and headed to Logan Airport to start this next work adventure with an open mind and my camera at the ready. My trip began on a Friday in Washington, D.C., where I worked an Idealist Fair, and then I headed further south on Sunday to Nashville (otherwise known as music city) to meet up with the rest of the G4.

A little background info: “G4” is a group of four schools consisting of SAIS (Johns Hopkins), SIPA (Columbia) and Georgetown MSFS, in addition to Fletcher. We plan travel each year to college campuses across the country and join forces in meeting students. We’ve been traveling like this for over 30 years and everyone looks forward to these particular recruiting trips! The idea is that there are a lot of similarities between our schools, but we also have unique characteristics that make us each who we are. We give school presentations and answer questions at every visit, while highlighting what makes each of the four schools similar and different.

Before starting the G4 trip, I got to spend some time in D.C. after the Idealist event. Here are some pictures from my day off on Saturday, which was spent sightseeing and enjoying the magnificent weather!

From D.C., I flew down to Nashville on Sunday to meet up with the other schools and begin our G4 Southern Swing, which started on Monday morning. I had never been to Nashville before so I spent Sunday afternoon exploring the downtown area and checking out the Country Music Hall of Fame. It was neat to see all the live music venues and even cooler to hear all the different music as you walked around town. I loved that no matter where I turned I could hear live music from every direction.

We met up Sunday night for an amazing dinner at Merchants (I highly recommend the soup/sammie combo) and then headed out first thing Monday morning for visits at Fisk University and Belmont University. We then drove from Nashville over to Sewanee, TN to visit the University of the South. Everyone said the drive would be stunning and it didn’t disappoint. We drove over the Cumberland Plateau, which had incredible views of the mountains and valleys for as far as the eye could see! If you have the opportunity, definitely take a drive from Nashville to Monteagle, TN.

The next morning we left Tennessee and made our way down to Atlanta for a few days with visits to Morehouse/Spellman, Emory, Agnes Scott, and the University of Georgia out in Athens. It was neat for me to see all the different campuses and I was especially captivated by the size of the football stadiums (I’m from New Hampshire – we don’t have anything like that back home!). From Atlanta we went to Gainesville, Florida to visit Florida A&M and University of Florida, and we ended our tour in Tallahassee at Florida State University. All-in-all it was a wonderful experience; I learned lots of new things and made some great new friends! I’m looking forward to my next G4 trip to Southern California in a few weeks! Enjoy the pictures from the trip below. Take note: Fletcher is everywhere, even on the UF campus (see first pic)!

You can catch up with us at more recruiting events next week in NY, DC, Atlanta, and Chicago (sign up here) or at our next G4 trip which heads to Mexico and Texas in early November.